


The Wrong Reasons

by manic_intent



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, Missing Scene, Prequel, Spoilers for John Wick 3, That prequel/missing scene fic where John meets the Elder before they become who they now are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-10 01:19:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18928402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: "A Green Beret and a Moroccan mercenary walk into a bar,” said the stranger as he sat down beside John at the counter. He winked as John stared at him and ordered a shot of guaro.





	The Wrong Reasons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [midnightwriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightwriter/gifts).



> Prompt 2/4, for @_purplefiction: John/Elder. They were on opposite sides at war and they shared one night. John became an assassin, Elder became Elder.
> 
> This was a bit of a tricky one--The Elder, Saïd Taghmaoui, is Moroccan-French, the character he plays can be found in Morocco, and Morocco is one of the US’s oldest and closest North African allies. So instead of detailing an actual war (which will need me to do a lot of timeline research gg) I’m just going to make up an event. Saïd’s also 10+ yrs younger than Keanu so juggling ages and stuff is difficult as it is.
> 
> More context for this ship:
>
>> friend: o yeah Saïd Taghmaoui was in Wonder Woman  
>  me: o the guy who heavily mangles the chinese dialect along with Wonder Woman *googles for context photo*  
>  google: ..... :)))) have this photo  
>  me: ☠️holy shit [pic.twitter.com/0RIVEE23pn](https://t.co/0RIVEE23pn)
>> 
>> — Manic 🏳️🌈 (@manic_intent) [May 19, 2019](https://twitter.com/manic_intent/status/1130019800837632002?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

“A Green Beret and a Moroccan mercenary walk into a bar,” said the stranger as he sat down beside John at the counter. He winked as John stared at him and ordered a shot of guaro. 

John was halfway through a cold beer—the bar didn’t have any bourbon, and he wasn’t in the mood for rum. The weeks he’d spent on the quiet in Colombia hadn’t managed to endear him to guaro, which was made from sugarcane and flavoured with aniseed. Strong stuff, too. The stranger tipped back a shot. Young man, probably flush into his early twenties, bright-eyed, dark-haired, handsome. Black shirt, grey jeans. No visible weapon. Maybe he didn’t need one here. If he was a mercenary, he probably worked for the cartels. 

“Okay,” John said, when the silence stretched. Normally, he ignored anyone who tried to make small talk with him. His free time was limited, and if he wanted conversation he’d get a drink with his squadmates. Still. There was something about the young man that defied silence.

“That’s it? ‘Okay’?” The young man asked. He grinned mischievously, a grin that highlighted the delicate lines of his face. He smelled of sweat and cigarettes. 

“This joke got a punchline?” John wasn’t sure why he was playing along. The young man was probably at least a decade younger than John. He knew the look. He’d been that young once, young enough to be impressed with himself when all he had known was war. 

“The Green Beret says, ‘Okay’. The Moroccan mercenary says, ‘That’s it?’ There’s nothing more to say. They’re both in a foreign country for the wrong reasons, enemies for the wrong reasons, so they might as well have a drink together for the wrong reasons.” The young man winked. “Let me buy you a drink.” 

“It’s your wallet,” John said. He ended up buying the young man another shot of guaro. The mercenary didn’t ask for names, which suited John fine. He didn’t want to know how he’d been picked out as a Green Beret—as far as he was aware, he was in civvies, and Americans weren’t an unusual sight nowadays in Bogotá. “What wrong reasons?” John asked. 

“Isn’t it obvious? You’re here because of the so-called War on Drugs?” The mercenary infused his statement thickly with disdain. “Someday you people will learn. Something like this can’t be fixed by shock and awe. After you declare your mission accomplished, everything will come back. Simple economics.” He traced one elegant finger over the rim of his glass. 

John had the same opinion about the mission, and it wasn’t just because he’d grown up in a different set of circumstances from his squadmates. “Not for me to decide.” 

The mercenary chuckled. “That’s what I find funny about people like us. We’re trained killers. The lives we’ve lived have turned us into predators. But we still listen to prey. We could walk away from all this right now. Use our skills to live interesting lives. And yet we don’t.”

“Speak for yourself,” John said. He’d had a taste of an interesting life. He’d choked himself on it. Unlike the others, the bad dreams that came to him in the night had little to do with boot camp or the people he’d killed. He dreamed of breaking his feet before a mirror, of pulling toenail shards out of his own feet. He dreamed of a woman’s voice, snapping above his head like a whip. “What about you?”

“I work for a man I despise, with people I despise. It builds character.” 

“You like that?” 

“Do _you_ like what you do? You don’t look like the sort.” The mercenary’s earnest sympathy startled John. Judging from the way he walked, the placement of his hands, and his confidence, John had instinctively placed the mercenary as a very particular sort of professional. The sort that John had grown up with under the Director. Empathy had no easy place in a person who could kill another human and still sleep soundly at night.

“I don’t. Don’t know what else to do. Enlisted thinking it’d help me escape. Turned out to be more of the same.” John kept his answer deliberately vague. There weren’t any set rules about talking to the uninitiated, but the High Table tended to frown upon random police inquiries. 

“Ah. I understand. It was something like that for me. A series of irresponsible decisions. I don’t regret any of it.” The mercenary tipped his glass against John’s and drank. “Regret is like voluntarily drinking poison. Better to keep trying to make the best out of your choices.” 

“Hasn’t worked so far,” John said. He motioned the bartender over and bought the mercenary another shot. 

“You get better at anything with practice. We all have to practice. Some of us in life are lucky enough to come across our heart’s desire. Something that we sense will complete us as a person. Whether it’s someone else, something else, a purpose, whatever it is. When you do, practice will give you the courage to go after it with everything you have. Hell take the consequences.” The mercenary tipped his glass to John again and took a sip. 

“A Moroccan mercenary walks into a bar in Bogotá, and he turns out to be a philosopher,” John said. The mercenary’s words were settling against his skin like a gentle cloak. He repeated them in his mind, carefully memorising them for later. They felt right. 

“I have the blood of philosophers in my veins. This would be a better start for a joke: A Moroccan philosopher walks into a bar in Bogotá, and he turns out to be a mercenary.” The mercenary downed his shot and held up a palm when John made as though to buy him another one. 

“What’s the punchline?” John asked, his own drink forgotten. 

“He buys the American a drink and says, ‘Life is short, time is precious. How about going somewhere more private?’” The mercenary winked cheekily. 

John huffed with amusement. “That’s the most terrible pickup I’ve ever heard.” Dangerous, too—not that anyone in the bar gave them a second glance. They were clearly both dangerous people. 

“Did it work?” the mercenary asked. John shrugged. He wasn’t expected back at the base anytime soon anyway. He motioned for the mercenary to lead the way, watching the shadows in case this was more than what it appeared to be. 

It wasn’t. The mercenary lived in a comfortable apartment near Zona G, which told John that he was most certainly not just an average cartel guard. Whoever he was, John didn’t care. They kissed against the door as the mercenary locked it behind John, John pulling them flush, the mercenary tiptoeing to compensate. He tasted unkindly of guaro and yet John groaned and chased more of it on the mercenary’s tongue, ground against the thigh pressed between his legs. 

“How do you want this?” the mercenary asked, his breath hot against John’s throat. 

“Haven’t thought that far,” John confessed. The mercenary laughed. He tucked his fingers into John’s shirt and led him deeper into the apartment, kissing as they went. They tripped over stray shoes, over a coffee table, over a rug. The mercenary laughed as John cursed a stubbed toe and hauled him down over the elegant grey couch. They kicked off their shoes, the mercenary whistling in appreciation as he pulled John’s shirt off and got a good look at his ink.

“I didn’t think American military tattoos would look like this.” He tickled his fingers over John’s bicep. 

“Like what?” John asked, wary. 

“Not trying to be a critic, but the tattoos either haven’t aged well or they’re older than they should be. And the design.” The mercenary wormed out from under John, kissing his shoulder, his spine, the great cross etched onto his back. “Looks more like a prison or cartel tattoo than something a soldier would wear.” 

John tensed. “Does it matter?”

“No need to snap.” The mercenary brushed kisses over the text high over John’s shoulder blades, one for each word. “It was just an observation.” 

“You’re good at those,” John said, a not-quite compliment, more of a warning. The mercenary chuckled, rubbing his cheek against John’s shoulders. He nipped John in the centre of the cross where the final brand would sit, should John ever invoke his ticket, chuckled again as John shivered. Did the mercenary know…? The Colombian cartels weren’t part of the Arrangement. They were one of the few remaining holdouts—apparently, they had no interest in serving the High Table. 

“You’ve gone quiet,” the mercenary said. He rubbed his erection against John’s ass. 

“Best you get used to that,” John said. He tried to twist around, but the mercenary hummed and draped himself over John’s back. 

Well. What did it matter whether the mercenary knew? If he did, it would probably even be safer. They would both be escapees from a system, eking out ugly livings in one of the few parts of the world that the Arrangement hadn’t touched. John let the mercenary strip them both down. He was guided up onto his hands and knees with a gentle touch, something he hadn’t been expecting. 

When he’d lived under the Director, he and the other students often found what comfort they could from the brutality of their lives in each other, but it was a rushed reprieve spent in furtive spaces. In the military, John preferred the impersonality of paid affection. This was new, disorienting. A stranger caressed his thighs, stroked his cock with a lover’s playful confidence. John thrust into the spit-slicked hand with a moan he buried against his wrist. It felt insufficient to say the mercenary was perceptive. He had read John like a book, creased his fingers into John’s spine, kissed the pages of his skin and consumed the lesson that John had not thought to teach. 

“Your thighs, together,” the mercenary said with wry tenderness. John didn’t look over his shoulder as he obeyed. He didn’t need to see if it was feigned, whether it was said archly. The mercenary’s cock was slick and fat, slotting in between the tight pressure John made of his thighs, under his balls. John groaned as the stranger began to thrust, the mercenary’s gasps and whimpers pressed against the inked Fortuna on John’s back. He gave John a tight circle of his fingers to fuck into, grunting as he drove himself against John’s thighs, whispered words against John’s spine in a language John couldn’t catch. For something that was fast becoming the most viscerally intimate thing John had ever done with another person, it did not surprise John that he still didn’t care to know the mercenary’s name. He took what he was given instead, chased the raw edge of ecstasy as it lit under his skin. He came against the couch with a cry that he buried into a pillow. There was a satisfied grunt behind him, a kiss against his neck. The mercenary slipped back, then thrust against John’s ass in sharp jerks until he was spilling against the small of John’s back. 

John lay in the mess on the couch, exhausted in every way. He didn’t look up as the mercenary padded off and returned with a towel, cleaning them both up. “There’s a bed,” the mercenary said after he was done, grinning playfully. “Big enough for two.” When John was silent, he added, “It’s up to you.” 

The bed was barely big enough for the both of them. It meant tangled legs and an awkward fit too close to an open balcony over a dim street. Clear line of sight to the next building, to the opposite balcony. Normally, John’s instincts would’ve kicked him into at least closing the shutter doors. He sprawled under the mercenary instead, blinking. They’d pulled their underwear and trousers back on, but not their shirts. It was too warm. 

“Quiet again,” the mercenary said, poking John’s nose. “It wasn’t that boring, was it?” 

John shook his head. “Why do you do what you do?” he asked. “You’re smart, I can tell. Why are you here?” 

The mercenary was silent for a while. He shifted up onto his elbows. “Life is so short. I look at it and think, how boring it would be if I was just like everyone else. Becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a businessman. I could make myself rich if I wanted, but what’s the point? So I came here to learn.”

“From the cartels? Learn about what?” 

“Not just from the cartels, and not just from here. I’m here to learn about power.” The mercenary kissed John’s shoulder. “About death and life. I think the world is changing. It is dying in every way. Not just as we devour the resources. We are devouring each other in violent ways. Cartels, terrorists, armed conflicts, they’re all different heads of the same beast, one that is quickly evolving. Someday, in the future, war will be more different than we can now imagine. Contracted out to private firms, perhaps, fought on impersonal fronts. When war is impersonal it will be forgettable, and when it is forgettable more people will die. No one will care.” 

“You want to stop all that?” John asked. 

“It cannot be stopped. Perhaps it can be controlled. I don’t know how that could be done, though.” The mercenary smiled. “Not by a single man.”

John sifted through his pockets and found a coin, passing it to the mercenary. “Know what this is?” 

The mercenary studied it with interest, tracing the embossed gold design. “Can’t say I’ve seen one before. It’s too new to be an antique. Heavy.” He turned it around in his hands. “Expensively made, if I had to judge. Doesn’t have any numerical value on it, so it can’t have served as currency. A commemorative coin?” 

“It’s yours,” John said. He looked the mercenary in the eyes. “Someday, when you want to do something else, go home to Morocco.” He rattled off an address. “Go inside and give the coin to the person at the reception. Ask for the Manager.” 

“Interesting,” said the stranger. “Thank you, I think.” 

“You’ll see,” John said. He tucked his face against a stranger’s throat and tried to dream of better things.

#

The stranger—now the Elder—let himself into the tent on quiet feet. John glanced up from the tub, silent. The hot water felt good against the bruises, even if it made his more recent wounds sting.

“I was surprised to see you,” the Elder said. He pulled up a stool and sat close by. Not quite within reach. The years had been kinder to the Elder, surreal as it still felt for John to be in a tent that smelled of myrrh in the middle of the desert, surrounded by people who looked like extras from an Arabian Nights movie. 

Life had inured John to surreality. “Yeah,” John said. 

“Did you know? That I was the Elder?” 

“No.” It had taken John a few seconds to believe his eyes. “Wasn’t surprised.” The young man he had met in Bogotá had been exceptional in a way John couldn’t articulate. Now he could. It was a pity that the years had weaned the stranger of his mischief, even as time had given him power in return.

The Elder thought this over, his eyes going distant. John hesitated for a moment, then he shrugged and continued scrubbing himself clean. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t already seen the entirety of each other anyway. “Will you serve?” the Elder asked. 

“Said I would.” John held up his now four-fingered hand pointedly. 

“You must have known that penance would not be easy to give. What would be the point?” 

“Said. I would.” John ducked his head into the water, rinsing off the sand. He flinched as fingers tickled over his shoulders, tracing over new bruises. 

The Elder tutted. “You should have stayed in the Green Berets. Or stayed a civilian after you came home.” 

“Tried,” John said. He washed his face.

“You were medevaced home after breaking your leg in two places. You tried a string of security jobs while convalescing but grew addicted to painkillers.” 

John looked up. He saw no judgment in the Elder’s face, nothing but a gentle look of wry curiosity. “Wasn’t a secret,” John said. The Tarasovs had been the ones who had picked him out of a bad spot, weaned him off the drugs, set him back to work. For years John had been grateful for that. 

“Jordani Jovanich,” the Elder said. He smiled as John stared evenly at him. “A man of many names.” 

“You’re a man of none,” John said. The Elder could have no name. Now and before. 

“I would have told you mine had you asked,” the Elder said. He stroked the damp press of John’s hair, tucking tresses behind John’s ear. “Understand that the High Table does not appreciate you being given a second chance. Yet you did me a favour a long time ago, and I remember my debts. This was the best compromise I could get.” 

“I understand,” John said. It still burned. 

The Elder traced the wet line of John’s back down to the still-healing scar of the brand, watching John as he did so. “When you have completed your task, come back to me,” the Elder said. He drew his hand away. “We should talk.” 

“I serve,” John said, choking out the words, “and I will be of service.” 

“See that you are,” the Elder said, and rose to his feet.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent.tumblr.com  
> \--  
> Refs:  
> https://www.thenation.com/article/american-special-ops-forces-have-deployed-to-70-percent-of-the-worlds-countries-in-2017/  
> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/mercenaries-assassination-us-yemen-uae-spear-golan-dahlan


End file.
